What makes a political party different from a pressure group is that a political party participates in elections. Which makes this attitude rather grim for people who think beating the Tories in elections is better than losing to them:

Garry Parvin, High Peak constituency secretary, reported an increase in membership from 100 to 463 – with 259 joining after the May election before and 30 September. “In the main, yes, they are Corbyn supporters,” he said.

Asked whether remaking the party to reflect leftwing values was more important to them than winning the 2020 general election, Parvin said: “Frankly, yes. There are a lot of ideologically driven people who feel that we’re going to lose anyway so we may as well lose on principle.”

One related factor which is worth remembering is that with the Tories now set to push ahead with plans to reduce Parliament to 600 MPs (probably), widespread boundary changes will force widespread reselections on Labour MPs, even if Jeremy Corbyn and his team put the dampers on deselection movements.

With Labour party members taking the line of ‘it’s better to be pure and be losers than to stop the Tories winning’, how many moderate MPs who are not of that view will find themselves struggling in selections against candidates which do reflect the attitudes of new Labour members?